Long a Joyce Theater regular, Doug Varone and Dancers return there next week for the first time in quite a while. During a break in rehearsal recently, the prolific choreographer confessed, Im totally freaked out about coming back to New York.

He and his troupe have been busily touring nationally and internationally, but, he said, We havent had a New York season since my infamous New York Times review.

He was referring to a gratuitously scathing 2007 critique of a new work of his, commissioned by BAMs Next Wave Festival, which made it subsequently difficult for the company to find engagements.

It basically destroyed us work-wise for about a year.

The new Joyce season features the lyrical Tomorrow (2000) to Belle Epoch songs, the luscious Lux (2006) to Philip Glass music, and the New York premiere of Alchemy, (2008), inspired by and set to Steve Reichs Daniel Variations, an homage to slain journalist Daniel Pearl.

The Reich score incorporates text both from Pearls writing and from the biblical Book of Daniel. The Bible text recounts its namesakes stringent trials of religious fidelity  Daniel in the lions den. Pearls kidnapping and beheading by suspected Al Qaeda agents in Pakistan in 2002 caused international outrage.

That tragedy moved Reich to compose Daniel Variations in tribute, and he gave Varone  one of the most musical choreographers around permission to use it. As a dance-maker, Varone takes his inspiration from music.

I live with the score for about six months, and then I start making material, he said.

From his sources  the music, the biblical story, and his own research on Daniel Pearl and his family  he strove to glean imagery that makes people understand feelings and takes them on the [emotional] ride you want to take them on.

As the dance begins, a tall woman stands alone onstage mumbling to herself and raising her hands slowly toward her face, as if in grief  or prayer. An image inspired, perhaps, by Marianne Pearl, wife of the victim. However, Varone said, If you see characters, thats great, but they are not specific characters. What weve done is transport ideas into movement.

Here, dancers slowly crawling in a tight pack suggest oppression; men collide with and rebound off each other in anguished aggression; women offer comfort to crumpled men, curled helplessly in their laps. The images can be searing.

I live with a score for a good six months, Varone explained. Then well start building material; I find my way through and make outlines and scratch away at it. The process for this has been amazing and quite unique, actually, because of the subject matter. Ive really taken care to visualize with honor, because of its 

He paused to search for the right word. Not finding it, he continued, Weve been in touch with the Pearl family. They commissioned the score. This is the first time its being used for dance, and they were worried about imagery that might be upsetting. I had to be clear with them that the work has a potency thats affecting people, and the reason why is that it has to be ugly before its beautiful.

Varone elaborated.

I also feel it opens the same kind of dialog that [Pearl] did as a journalist. Id like to believe that dance can be that way. Pausing again to ponder, he asked, Whats the word Im looking for? It came to him.  Sensitivity.

Uncharacteristically, Alchemy builds to its kinetic climax relatively early, in the third of four sections, when the dancing becomes vigorously nonstop, testing the dancers stamina. Then, as Reichs music continues its propulsive surge, the movement in contrast becomes quiet, restrained, intensely intimate, letting the aural rush reflect our rising emotions, while the dancing transcends the tumult and achieves a gratifying serenity.

Despite the gravity of the subject and its tragic outcome, in the end Alchemy is optimistic.

The thing thats so beautiful about the score is that it bleeds you, and then it heals, said Varone. The last movement is about believing that something good can come out of something horrific. The message of the dance is hope.